Identification cards have used magnetic data strips in conjunction with photographs of the card holder.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,236,332, Domo discloses a medical record card containing a microfilm portion having some data visible to the eye and other data visible by magnification. The directly visible data is alphanumeric character codes pertaining to emergency medical conditions of the patient and the magnifiable data portions detail the medical history.
In U.K. patent application No. 2,044,175, Maurer et al. teach a card having eye readable, machine readable and security verification information. The machine readable data may be laser recorded or magnetic data.
Silverman et al. teach, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,213,038, an access control system with an identification card. The card has machine recordable indicia used to choose a master microspot pattern from the machine's memory. This master pattern is compared with an identical pattern on the card for verification. The card also has space for a picture and a signature. Similarly, Idelson et al., in U.S. Pat. No. 4,151,667, teach an identification card having a photograph and a phosphorescent bar code pattern used for verification.
The amount of information these cards can hold is extremely limited. Data visible to the eye occupies a considerable amount of space on a card, which further limits the amount of information that can be stored. In the patent to Idelson et al., the photograph and bar code pattern overlap. Random microspot patterns can only be used for verification, while bar codes can only represent a small amount of specific data.
In prior application Ser. No. 822,067, assigned to the assignee of the present invention, a data card was disclosed having both eye readable images and laser recorded machine readable data. More specifically, a data card was disclosed having laser recording material which could either be prerecorded or recordable in situ. The data card also included an eye-readable visual image, such as a photograph. One of the problems encountered in manufacturing such cards is in achieving registration between the eye readable data and the machine readable data when data cards are mass produced.
An object of the invention was to devise a card manufacturing method which would achieve registration between eye readable and machine readable data. Another object of the invention was to provide quality control for data cards by identifying cards having flaws or errors and rerecording the same cards.